Energy plus

What plant-based-food energy does for us on a physical level is matched by benefits to our state of mind. Plant food makes for clear thinking - thinking through broader issues, particularly global issues. Not feeling clogged up or trying to think along compromised lines. What is it, clear conscience or clarity of thought? Whatever it is, it makes us feel part of a big family-like association not only with our own kind but with life itself in its varied manifestations. Empathy is it? Being vegan, thinking vegan, (horrible word coming up ...) embracing things outside our own self-interest zone, making us become more empathetic. This new sensitisation brings us directly into protecting the weak. From here it all becomes rather obvious, what is important to DO. Thus to get involved with the great causes of our age.
As we take up this conscience-driven, empathetic, cause-based way of thinking, so we see how vegan principle is closely connected with other issue areas; each one calls for that same empathetic sensitivity that we bring to vegan philosophy. And out of that solutions emerge.
As we empathise and see the suffering (for it’s suffering which alerts us to the disparity-of-advantage between us and them, them being anything not-human) we see our advantage and worry about it. Well. And isn’t that the point? Some do, some don’t. Worry.
For those of us who do worry and want to encourage attitude change, we see the importance of parity. And pretty soon, after embarking down this egalitarian road, we begin to find certain things unconscionable. Primarily for animal rights advocates, we begin to consider how anyone or anything that is being enslaved or exploited is in a bad position, since unlike us they can’t contribute to the destiny of this planet. They have no say and pretty much no actual life.
Anyone or anything being made to suffer is disabled from taking any meaningful part in the building of the future. Vegans, as ‘empathisers’ can see a pattern here. Perhaps ultimately this is what the mental energy is so useful for, bringing things together in the mind and seeing the overall picture, from which radiate all sorts of understandings. And these ‘little clarifications’ taking the blinkers off our eyes, lets us take an interest in the whole compassion-empathy philosophy. Such as veganism. It’s so central to such a surprising number of global issues that one could say it holds almost panacea status.
Now that may sound like a rather big claim for just a little, simple, plant-based diet … but then of course it’s not just a diet, not by a long chalk. In life, once we take a firm grip on new food and clothing habits we can move on, past the rather unnecessary lifestyle struggle (of altering our reason to be avoiding certain foods and commodities), past the chemical attachments we have for certain addictive food substances and onto a new, more broad ranging, .... what would you call it? Identity?